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Overview

From his role as FDR's "negro advisor" to his appointment, under Lyndon Johnson, as the first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Robert Clifton Weaver was one of the most influential domestic policy makers and civil rights advocates of the twentieth century. This volume, the first biography of the first African American to hold a cabinet position in the federal government, rescues from obscurity the story of a man whose legacy continues to impact American race relations and the cities in which they largely play out.

Editorial Reviews

Nation

"One cannot read Pritchett's book without thinking of Barack Obama, whose career seems, in certain respects, a reflection of Weaver's ambiguous legacy. . . . The battered buildings of the housing projects of Chicago and Detroit that Weaver worked so long, with so much hope, to build, cast their long shadows on the pages of this book, bleak reminders that the triumph of an individual cannot alone make up for these larger defeats. The strength of Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City is that it enables the reader to see the victory and the loss at once."—Kim Phillips-Fein, Nation

— Kim Phillips-Fein

Journal of American History

"The author has created a good study that is important for understanding the history of housing and race relations in modern America and the challenges facing African Americans within the realm of governmental bureaucracy."

— Edward F. Haas

Choice

"[Pritchett] has added an interesting biography to the field of US race relations and domestic politics of the postwar era. . . . Pritchett reveals Weaver as a man who shaped history but was also its victim."

Publishers Weekly

Weaver (1907-1997), the first black cabinet secretary (Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1966-1968) has become "a marginal figure in our public discussion today," but "for almost half of the century," Pritchett asserts, Weaver "shaped the development of American racial and urban policy." Pritchett follows Weaver from the Roosevelt to the Johnson administrations, guiding the reader safely through the mine field of acronymic government agencies, various foundations and academic institutions (he was the first president of Baruch College) in which Weaver played a role. Weaver's targets were racially restrictive covenants and the entrenchment of segregation in both public housing policy and government supported loans; compromises involving the latter made him a controversial figure as the civil rights movement burgeoned. Pritchett's biography is an exhaustive but well-paced account of a life more absorbed by political process and research than by social or political drama. Yet, as Pritchett shows, Weaver "was instrumental in the implementation of every major urban initiative, including public housing, urban renewal, affirmative action, rent control, and fair housing." (Oct.)

William Julius Wilson

“Wendell E. Pritchett’s engaging biography of Robert Clifton Weaver is a tour de force. Appointed by President Johnson as the first secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Weaver was the first African American to hold a cabinet position. However, few Americans are aware that Weaver was also an important figure in shaping the development of American racial and urban policy, and one of the nation’s foremost authorities on urban issues. Pritchett brilliantly captures the life and contributions of this great racial pioneer and in the process reveals how racial tensions profoundly influenced battles over the future of American cities.”

Arnold R. Hirsch

“We need to know the story of Robert Clifton Weaver, and to know more about the period between the Harlem Renaissance and the 1960s, a period for which African American history has not been explored with quite the same fervor as other periods. This important and accessible biography sheds light on these overlooked subjects and pays a previously unrecognized historical debt.”

Lizabeth Cohen

“Wendell Pritchett’s fascinating book delivers just what any reader wants in a good historical biography. Robert Weaver emerges as a complex, talented man caught in the contradiction between seeking a race-blind world and serving his race. And his personal struggles and achievements bring to light in a compelling way the shifting terrain of federal governmental authority, urban policy, and civil rights over the course of the twentieth century. This is a wonderful portrait of a man and, through that man, of dreams won and lost for a new, more equitable urban America.”

Journal of American History
- Edward F. Haas

"The author has created a good study that is important for understanding the history of housing and race relations in modern America and the challenges facing African Americans within the realm of governmental bureaucracy."

Nation
- Kim Phillips-Fein

"One cannot read Pritchett's book without thinking of Barack Obama, whose career seems, in certain respects, a reflection of Weaver's ambiguous legacy. . . . The battered buildings of the housing projects of Chicago and Detroit that Weaver worked so long, with so much hope, to build, cast their long shadows on the pages of this book, bleak reminders that the triumph of an individual cannot alone make up for these larger defeats. The strength of Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City is that it enables the reader to see the victory and the loss at once."

Choice

"[Pritchett] has added an interesting biography to the field of US race relations and domestic politics of the postwar era. . . . Pritchett reveals Weaver as a man who shaped history but was also its victim."

American Historical Review

“Pritchett’s book provides a welcome examination of an underappreciated and understudied civil rights and fair housing leader and urban planner. It is a well-conceived and much-needed study, not only of Weaver, but of race, urban policy, and liberalism in the twentieth century United States.”

American Studies

"Well-researched and engaging, Pritchett's biography reveals little about its subject beyond his public life. Still, it is an important work for specialists in African American history and urban studies. From the standpoint of historicizing the role of African Americans in the White House—a lineage that now includes President Barack Obama—Pritchett's work is a vital scholarly step."

Journal of African American History

“A work of impressive scope that traces the arc of an extraordinary life, well researched and written in a manner that mirrors the orderly way in which Weaver conducted both his life and work. . . . This richly detailed biography is useful in tracking African American achievements and leadership in government service. . . . Pritchett offers the first scholarly account of this previously unexamined figure, a pioneer who broke down many racial barriers, and who in some ways laid the groundwork for African American involvement in government service at the highest levels, culminating in the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency.”

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Wendell E. Pritchett is a presidential term professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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